


Una corda da custodire

by SaintSaens



Series: Dentro Questo Cassettino [2]
Category: Trust (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Memory Loss, Pre-Canon, Rape/Non-con Elements, looks like it's going well here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:14:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29491158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintSaens/pseuds/SaintSaens
Summary: This is what happened in Rome, when Primo called. It's a little bit of before, a lot of after.It doesn't really matter. It's not like Primo actually remembers.
Relationships: Leonardo & Primo Nizzuto, Primo Nizzuto & Regina, Primo Nizzuto/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Dentro Questo Cassettino [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2117310
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Una corda da custodire

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry.
> 
> This can be read as a stand-alone, but it would make more sense if you read (before/after) the other work of the serie ( that is, if you want to get the full picture of Primo's horrible terrible lack of communication skills). 
> 
> Again, I'm sorry. Please, heed the warnings.

It was a burning summer in Rome. 

He was bored. He had nothing better to do.

That's what Primo claimed anyway, when he ended up with a knife at his throat. His teeth showed.

That summer had been hard. 

The wind was dry, the warmth unrelenting. He had killed a man, and burned his place down, but then there were the man's goons, to be disposed of, the ones who had followed him around and tried to bring him down. Six of them he had put out in the past week, quietly, never noticed, before he decided it was clear enough for him to make it back here. To his flat. Finally. 

He hadn't counted on Avitabile bringing his nose into it. And throwing him a welcome party. 

With a knife pressing at his throat and a man whispering in his ear, telling him in no uncertain terms to calm himself or else, Primo clenched his teeth. His palms were flat against the wall in front of him. He was still dizzy.

"Stand down" the man said. 

_And we could be good friends._

He didn't say it, but it was implied. Primo wasn't stupid, he knew how it worked around here. 

He felt his gun being relieved from him.

"Why did you kill him? The boss wants to know. Call it misplaced curiosity." The man smiled, putting the gun away and his own knife back under his sleeve, as Primo heaved and turned around to get a good look at him.

His eyes were shining bright. As if this was the most interesting job he had had in a while.

Primo was weary, and tense, running on no sleep and too much coke this past week. 

He had been so close. So close to sleep, in peace, when the man had caught him.

He didn't say anything about it. 

He was aware enough to understand that playing nice wasn't an option. Not with Avitabile. Not after what he had done.

There was no point.

"I didn't appreciate the way he looked at me" Primo said blandly. 

The man hummed, as if he understood what he was saying.

"Few men would have gone that far against him, for a look. Fewer would have managed to come through." 

"I was bored." Primo told him "Nothing better to do."

The man smirked. 

"Well, we could certainly make use of your... skills, Primo. Next time you're bored, come to us, yes? Don Giuseppe will hear you out. And maybe, he can help you. Find something for you to do." he smiled, extending his hand. The one which had held the knife. 

"I'm Gabriele" he announced.

Primo wondered if he could kill him too, if he tried. 

His limbs were coursing with a faint tremor.

Of course he didn't try.

They had shaken hands, Gabriele and him. That was it.

It didn't matter so much if anyone believed him, his reasons, or not. 

He had killed. And for that, apparently, he got a foot in.

It was better than nothing.

(even if he had lost his gun.

That didn't sit well with him.)

Pictures of the burned down flat circulated. In the newspapers, on TV. It had for a while been a subject of gossips. There were whispers in Rome, of some great scheme, a grand strategy, some politics maybe. Back in Calabria, even Salvatore told him about it. Said that those roman dogs were mad. That they never did things by halves. 

Salvatore laughed. 

Primo watched.

If only he knew. 

Primo didn't tell him. He kept silent. It didn't mean anything. 

Leo stayed silent too, when he heard about it. His eyes were anxious. But he stayed silent too.

That was new. 

It weighted on him, strangely enough. 

Primo took the easy way out, left them there.

And didn't look back.

(he hadn't counted on Regina.)

Regina asked him, about himself. As soon as she caught sight of him. 

As if she had been scared. 

She told him they had been worried. 

As if she knew something, she understood. 

Just by looking at him.

But then, she told him to call again, if he needed to.

To call again. 

Regina tells him. "You did right. You called. I'm glad."

His mind is reeling, his thoughts slipping away from him.

He can't make sense of what she's saying to him. 

That, the call, whatever, he didn't remember. 

He drove away, before he could ask her. 

Pictures of the dead man's body, those had been kept locked up for a few select pairs of eyes only. There were talks, but the pictures themselves were never shown. 

Don Giuseppe made sure it was all hushed-up, that's what he told Primo. That man had deserved it after all, why should we care about his ending. It was better, if no one spoke too much about him. That's what he had told Primo, with a glint in his eyes. A glint Primo didn't like. 

You and me, we know better, it seemed to be saying. Careful what you do. Careful what you aim for. I have something of yours, here. Don't forget about it. 

Primo didn't say anything. 

He didn't feel anything either. 

As if it didn't matter to him. Although it should have. 

It was a trace he had left, his own mark.

He wondered about it, until he didn't. 

(he couldn't bare it anymore -

but hey, at least, he got back his gun.

He wasn't one to look at a gift twice.)

It became his first Roman legend, that killing, although no one exactly knew why he did it. 

Boredom, or retaliation, for a simple look gone wrong they guessed. Primo took it with the same grace he took everything else. 

He would make do, like he always did. 

Sometimes, someone would ask him. How did you do it? How did you get in? How did you kill them all and come out still breathing? 

The first one to ask had been Gabriele, with the promise of free coke and a glint in his eyes that Primo didn't really like anymore now. 

Primo had shrugged and kept it at that. Gabriele had probed at him, spoken a lot, too much maybe, but in the end he had relented. That man had looked at him too a few times, it had never felt right, was what he whispered to Primo that night.

Primo had taken the free coke. Gabriele hadn't asked anymore, and after a while Primo resented less the glint in his eyes. 

It was fine. He understood it now. 

He almost could get used to it again. Come to appreciate it, too. 

(but -

that was still too difficult.)

To be completely fair, Primo knows why he killed the man. It's in his bones, in the way he reacts, even now there are stains left of that night. 

Where he used to smirk at a lingering gaze, his teeth are now showing. Where he could go around anywhere and enjoy the night, and be drunk and laugh out loud, now he prowls about, careful and alert. High on coke. He knows why.

Even in Rome, not everything is fine.

It's trying.

He knows why he did it. 

It's his instincts that tell him.

But how he did it... Even for him, that part is still hazy. 

(and he doesn't like it the least bit.)

He remembers the six men he killed, the man's goons. 

But him...he can't make sense of it.

(he thinks about calling - it doesn't leave him be. 

Why are his ears ringing?)

Right place, right time. That's what he tells Leonardo when the man asks, about how he did it in Rome.

How he managed to get invited into Avitabile's circles.

Right place. 

Right time. 

But who was he kidding? 

Even Leo should have seen through it. This made-up lie, bigger than him, bigger than life. Weighting him down. Dragging in his steps, behind his eyes. 

It haunted him. Leo had to see through it. Leo had to tell him, that he wasn't fooling him. 

Leo had to explain to him, what was going on. What was happening. 

What it all meant.

What would happen next.

Leo doesn't. 

He leaves him be.

(Primo could handle many things. Strangely enough, this -

Primo couldn't handle it.)

When he sees Anna Maria, huddled and scared, on the doorstep of Leo's and Regina's house, back home in Calabria, he can't help himself. He shows his teeth. He bites at her. He smirks.

He thinks she's pathetic. Cowering like she is.

It's instinctive.

He doesn't dwell too much on it. 

She asks him for his gun.

She tells him he's just like the others. Cesario and all those others. Salvatore, his own father.

It stings. Because he knows, deep down, he isn't. 

He could never be. 

He keeps his gun to himself.

He can see Leo's and Regina's disapproving glare.

He knows why he doesn't give her the gun. It lingers in his mind. 

It's his. 

He has used it.

He might still need it.

He still doesn't remember everything. 

He thinks he might have given a call.

He craves to give one, now.

But it doesn't mean anything.

It can't.

He can't let it.

He is split in half by that knowledge.

He knows, that had it been any time before, he would have left his gun to her without a backward glance. 

It's just a gun. He can find others. He still has a riffle. A knife. And he's back in Rome. A gun, it's not as rare as it could be. It's nothing. He shouldn't care about it. She could use it. She could throw it away. He would be there to see the consequences, watch how she would carry on with it. Would she have killed Cesario? Would she stand the blood on her hands? Or would she use it on herself? Selfish, selfless, a free pass to the other side, just like that, give up and leave them all behind.

Primo would have given it to her, before, if only out of curiosity. To witness how she would handle it, the gun and all its meanings. 

Because it's just a gun to him. Just a piece of metal, like many others. It didn't matter.

And still. 

The gun he keeps. 

And Anna Maria leaves, empty-handed. 

(he doesn't want to dwell too much on it)

(and still, at the back of his mind, there's a tone, ringing, muted and dark 

Is that a cry?)

How he got in? That question always made him chuckle, spite bitter behind his teeth. He wanted to bare them to the world in a triumphant smirk every time someone asked him. It burned his guts and left him clawing at nothing. 

Why, the man himself had opened the door, that's how. Nothing easier than that. 

It wasn't completely true, when he claimed he hadn't liked the way the man had looked at him. 

He hadn't minded much, at the beginning. 

He had felt powerful, even. Such a gaze, at such an hour, and such a time, right when he had just managed a good bit of thieving and had had money to last him for weeks. Under the blazing lights of the discoteca, sipping a sweet and dizzying drink at the bar, sweat cooling down his neck, sticking to his shirt and his hair. He had been exhausted, for all the right reasons, and still thrumming, with the fire of a successful deed and the future waiting, grand and free. Welcoming.

Primo had felt good, and he couldn't lie, he had felt even better when he had caught the man's eye. Insistent, hungry. Intense. Asking, begging, for something only he could provide. 

That's what power felt like. 

How he got in, that he could never forget. He could have been drunk on the gaze alone. It had felt fucking great.

As for the rest, well. 

Who cares? 

(Primo had promised. He never lies. Doesn't mean he has to say everything out loud.

But it has to show, somehow. What happened. 

What he did.

And everyone is still blind around him.)

"You can call too." Regina tells him. "We take care of our own, here." 

He wants to laugh at her stupidity. He isn't naive, he knows better. 

They take care of their own, sure. 

But he isn't one of their own now, is he?

He isn't like them. 

He looks at her, and Leonardo, and thinks about Anna-Maria with Cesario.

He knows he never will be. 

That's why he's alone. As he always will be.

(I've already tried, he thinks distantly, he doesn't know why, I've already tried.

No one answered right.

But you wouldn't care about that.)

He knows why he did it, can feel it in his blood. He knows how he got in. 

There is still that ringing, in his ears. 

He doesn't know much more than this, at the beginning.

It comes back to him slowly, trickling in, with a word, and a gesture, a product he comes near to. Something he hears. 

He is on edge, always. 

The fear is always there. Latent, in wait.

As if the wolf never left, even now that it's dead. 

His gun is always loaded.

Just in case.

Coke helps, for a while. It keeps him awake. It keeps him aware. 

Gabriele is only all too happy to provide. 

Until it makes it worst. 

Or something like that.

When Gabriele shows him a new drug they've started business on and doesn't let him try it, Primo feels something shatter inside of him. Because he knows that liquid, those bottles, small and darkly-colored. It's a faded memory, but he knows it.

He knows, about the lack of taste, of odor. 

It's in his blood. 

It's on his tongue.

"You don't feel it straight away, seems inoffensive really" Gabriele proudly swirls a small bottle around "It needs time, but it's more powerful than alcohol. A real marvel apparently, the same effects tenfold. Euphoria and everything." 

Euphoria, yes. 

Everything, well -

It snaps in Primo's mind, biting and barbed. 

There is confusion too, a muddled brain, flushing hot and cold under a dark gaze. Hands traveling up and down his skin, a smirk above him. And he, he couldn't do anything about it. 

Primo remembers.

He hated it. 

He remembers the drive, back to the man's flat, in his car. He remembers the messy kiss before that, in the backstreet of the discoteca. He remembers the glint in the man's eye when he had pushed Primo against his car and had offered in a whisper. A few drops. Nothing much. He had promised euphoria and everything too. Feelings like Primo had never known before. 

He remembers, feeling brazen and young. The liquid on his tongue, cold and bitter at first, straight from the tiny bottle. Straight from the man's fingers.

His throat feels raw. 

Gabriele doesn't notice.

"Have you tried it?" Primo rasps, keeping his fists clenched in his jacket for the time. 

Gabriele shakes his head. "We aren't allowed to. We sell it but we don't use it. Don Giuseppe says it's too dangerous. Plus, it's expensive."

"How does he know?" 

"We've given it to some people." Gabriele makes a face, putting the bottle back in his attaché case."They've seemed to appreciate it for a moment, but they became confused, some even lost consciousness, depending on the dose. They didn't remember shit in the end. Doesn't seem that nice. Most had troubles breathing afterwards. We've got clients though, asking just for that." 

Primo hums thoughtfully, his heart loud, slow. As if it's dying on him. The last beats before he breaks open, and spills all over. Spills that liquid all down to the ground to escape and never come back.

He sees blood on his hands. 

A razor under neon lights. Bright.

Six bullets. Shot. In the night.

He thinks his lungs might be giving in too. 

Just a side effect. 

He's not dead. 

Yet.

He takes his hands out of his jacket. Stretches them.

"You're still running those whores, right? The ones you said had taken a share off their clients' price?" 

His voice rings in his ears, but the other man doesn't seem to hear it.

Gabriele grimaces. "We had a... talk with them. They kept claiming they hadn't done jack shit. We insisted. It was quiet for a while, but some girls have already taken the others up on it, another place though. It seems like it's the time. All that feminist bullshit going to their mind."

Primo tries to keep his hands steady. He puts on his sunglasses.

"Maybe you should be more careful with what they drink." he drawls "just an idea."

Gabriele stares at him for a moment, before it clicks.

It gets Gabriele a rise, and Primo is officially more than a side help in the Avitabile's network after that. 

There were some good sides to all of this bullshit after all.

But he isn't stupid.

He still keeps his gun close.

That evening, when Primo remembers the drug and how it feels, it's almost enough for him to make a call.

He's trembling, alone. 

He wants to call _home._

Hear someone speak, slow, with no backward meanings and hidden ideas. Just listen to anyone, telling him what's going on, what's happening. Anyone being true, being honest, it's been so long, he doesn't know what it is like anymore. 

He finds himself standing in front of his phone and breathing heavily. He wonders, suddenly, about this urging feeling. 

The need for home. For the ringing to stop. To answer his call. For a voice, Leo's or -

He remembers the payphone that night, as he had left the man behind, hands ashen gripping at the box as the ringtone echoed in his ear. He remembers the single-minded focus with which he had reached for it, thinking he had promised something, he needed to call Leo. Leo would know. He remembers his lungs not cooperating at all, hunching over and trying to get a breath to matter in all this clusterfuck. He remembers hearing a voice, not Leo's, calling for him. He remembers the soft tone, the sharp tone, begging him to speak. 

Reaching out for him.

Breaking inside him.

Primo is standing in front of his phone, thin-lipped and cold that evening. 

He doesn't call.

He goes out. He walks. 

He walks and mindlessly, he goes to the nearest church around his flat. That's how he has been raised. He might need some stupid ingrained behavior to help. He recites his prayers and he tries to forget, to make sense, to get out of those thoughts. Tries to remember why he's in Rome. What good it's supposed to do. For them all. For him, alone.

It doesn't work that well. 

Who would have guessed.

That night, the dreams are harsher, and Primo can't lie to himself anymore, because he might not have the full picture, but he remembers enough to wish he didn't. He heaves above his sink and he doesn't try to sleep anymore.

It evades him. 

Replaced with those images.

His minds goes back home. He thinks about Leo watching him. He hears Regina speaking. 

_"We protect our own here."_

He bares his teeth and clings to the sink.

He remembers everything.

He remembers jumping awake, and feeling so fucking scared and helpless, naked in an unknown place. 

The man had used it to his advantage. 

Again.

He remembers how wrong it had felt (when it had felt so right, to kiss him and fumble with him in his car, in the corridor of his flat -). 

He remembers how awful it had been, afterwards. 

With the man laughing above him, in the night.

He remembers the glint in his eyes.

He remembers most of all the knowledge buzzing in his muscles, that he couldn't let it go. 

He needed to get the upper hand. 

He needed to erase it. All. Everything. 

To not leave a trace of that weakness lying around. 

Walking around. Talking out loud.

That mistake needed to die.

He heaves again.

He has his gun in his hands.

He remembers setting fire to the place. 

He remembers the fear in the man's eyes, when he had seized the razor lying about. When he had bled him out, like one of the goats back in Calabria. 

Or just another wolf.

Those things, he knew how to handle. 

He had taken the gun. 

Six bullets. 

Fired. 

He doesn't know if he picked them up.

It hurts.

If the next day he ends up bashing a guy's head in for a misplaced comment, a misplaced smirk, no one says anything about it. 

They know to leave him be. 

Gabriele watches him. There is still that same glint, the one that Primo had got used to, the one that sends him reeling, but it is intertwined with something else now. 

Fear, maybe. 

Primo smiles, in reply. 

He feels wild. He understands now, how it works. 

If this goes on, he could feel at home in Rome, almost.

The gun is by his side. 

It won't leave anymore.

So he knew, now. 

He remembered. 

He had dealt with it. 

Nothing else mattered. 

_Ever seen a goat in front of a wolf, Primo?_

He never expected Regina, to break through and spear his heart like she did.

One clean hit. 

_Ever seen a goat in front of a wolf?_

He could have laughed, if she hadn't decided to gut him. 

_We like to think we're predators, as human beings, Primo. The truth of it, really, is that we're all preys, first and foremost._

_It's survival, Primo._

_Anna Maria knows that. With Cesario, it's survival._

What does she thinks she is teaching him? I am the wolf, he wants to smile. 

I've been the goat, he wants to shout, deep down.

I was the goat.

I am the goat. 

  
_Whatever happens to us, it's not on us, Primo. We're not responsible. Not when it comes to that. Not when it's about who you are. Your death. Your life._

_You don't know what it's like. To be betrayed like that. To have to face the world afterwards._

He wants to howl at her back. 

That damned wolf, it won't leave me alone.

  
(that's why he runs, before she's done speaking. That's why he runs, because he can't face her honesty. He can't face the truth, and how she handles it. Strong. 

Stronger than he will ever be.

And she doesn't even know it.)

He has made his mind up after a while, torn and buried the past, crafted something up from scratch. After all, he wasn't one to sit at a table, be dealt a bad hand and take it in silence. 

Wrong place, wrong time then. This he will admit.

But he knew how to thrive on relegated goods and deprecated news. 

He could make do. 

He had to. 

He would always make do.

That's who he was. 

_We like to think we're predators, as human beings, Primo._ Regina had told him, as if she owned Wisdom and Justice and the Knowledge of everything _.The truth of it, really, is that we're all preys, first and foremost._

Fuck you, he wanted to spat. Fuck you, I'm not a prey. I'm better than that. 

I made a mistake. Once. 

Watch me making it again. 

Just watch me. 

I deserved it. Now I've learned. 

Next.

_How can you believe it?_

Regina would always be the one to reach for his heart and cut it out from him, to show him he could still feel. 

Maybe that's why he had always had a hard time letting her near.

He knew this, that evening, as soon as she sent one look at him. 

And yet he still asked her. 

_How can you believe it?_

_That it's all just survival? That you're not responsible?_

He hated her for it.

He almost screamed.

_How can you cry about being a victim and not do anything about it?_

He wondered how stupid he had been, to think he could confront her and come out winning.

She asks him. 

He tells her. About the man. And everything that came after.

That's when she buries him. 

_What did you trust him with?_

_Why did you trust him?_

She would always reach for his heart. She knew how to do just that.

He couldn't begin to understand why.

(he had never realized, that some nights, he had fallen asleep to her words, whispered in his ears. That it wasn't so much that she knew him, than that he had grown under her careful touch, to be who he is)

She asks, simply.

_What happened? To you?_

He tells her.

Not everything, but it's there, the beginning.

That he had wanted to trust the man as far as she trusts Leonardo. With his whole being. 

He thinks, just for one night. To be free, for one night. 

_Like you trust him, I said. With everything. Like Anna Maria trusted Cesario._

_Now tell me I deserved it._

Because he did. He did deserve it, everything that had happened to him. The arrogance, the fear, the understanding, the mess he had been left with. 

He had asked for it. 

He doesn't think she sees it.

It's hard to admit, to be true again. With her, out of anyone.

He had thought he could trust the man. Be honest, physically, with him.

If not in mind, then in body.

Regina takes it all without a blink. 

He throws at her his truth, his life, and she chases away the words as if they were flies bothering her eyes. She chases away the words, and takes the meaning as if it were a precious thing to be protected. She cradles it, and she smiles at him. As if she were proud of him. 

Regina seems intent on reassuring him. It's a bump in the road, it's something you've been through. But it's not the end for you. 

(he can't make sense of her, just taking things in stride, even _that_ , an admission which burns him deep down;

she doesn't comment, barely blinks. It's all so natural for her to hear, he wonders how long he had lied to himself about it, 

while she had known, just by standing next to him.)

(maybe he should have seen it coming. After Leonardo, he should have known.)

She knows about him, and his ways. The man. His preference. 

But he's certain she doesn't understand his meaning. 

The depth of what he admitted. 

_I trusted him. With everything._

With himself, fully, his deepest desires and guilt.

How his trust had been broken, and how it had left him bare and hurt. 

How he was still trying to piece himself back together. 

_you survived. There's nothing more I could ask._

That's what she says. He tries to tell her, that she doesn't understand, that's there's more. That it goes deeper. 

_It's never easy, to find the right person to be with, like you tried to. It's all about trials and errors. Some are harder than others to let go of. But it's our survival that counts._

That's what she gives him. 

He hates her for it, because it burns his tongue to share this weight with someone, but he doesn't think she would handle it.

She insists she loves him.

Would it still be the same, if he told her all about it? Because she might talk about shame, when it comes to loving, but when it comes to just sex, careless, one night to never happen again, is it the same?

He doesn't think he could bare it, if she were to change. 

So he keeps that part to himself. 

She's done enough for now.

The hole to bury that secret in his heart is deep enough.

He has to admit, though. 

She's right on one account. 

_It happens. It's alright. You're alive._

It's not the end for him, if he thinks about it. It's a beginning. In Rome, now, he knows who he is.

He also knows he will never let himself go, as he once did. Let himself be free, as he once did.

You'll find someone else, she seems to be saying. 

He wants to smile, at her naivety. 

He can't let anyone close, not after this. 

He won't anymore. But he can handle it.

It doesn't matter, really. 

Love, it's overrated, he thinks. He never really cared much for it. 

The sort of life like what he had been looking for that evening, that night, it brings only troubles to your door. 

Primo thinks.

He has made a name for himself, it's all laid out up there. A persona to be, an armor crafted from his deepest sin. 

Shining with blood and bad deeds.

He knows what he needs to do. 

To be sure he can live at all.

To be sure that that wolf is choked and won't come up again. 

He thinks about the bullets, left in his wake.

He thinks about that man, he thinks about Avitabile's hand, tight around the traces of his consequences.

Primo thinks.

He needs to own it all. From Rome to Calabria, he has to be on top. 

There's no other way he can breathe and go on.

It has to be him. 

Or it won't be anyone. 

He will make sure of it.

Regina frowns, when she glances again at him. 

Maybe, he will keep his plan for himself. 

(For the time being)

He doesn't comment when Anna Maria settles silently in the passenger seat of his car. 

She doesn't look away from the rear-view mirror, eyes wide, as he drives in the night. 

"You're going to Rome, right?" she asks him, after a while.

Primo hums in reply. 

"Drop me at the station. I'll manage from there." 

The glance Primo gives her is full of disdain. She smiles at him, careless and free. 

"You men" she laughs "always think you know better. I know what I am doing. I've thought about it too much." 

He looks away. 

He won't say it, but he envies her confidence that night. Hers, Regina's. Their pure confidence in the next steps. In going forward with their mistakes. 

Is that what it's like, to finally escape the wolf at your back? Or is it just blind ignorance, when you run away and don't chance a look back down?

He can't make up his mind. 

His fingers drum by the window of the car. He doesn't touch the cold glass.

"I owe you, Primo" Anna Maria tells him when he stops at Roma Termini."If you need anything, in Milano, you tell me." 

Her eyes are true, when he looks at her. She means it. 

He nods at her. 

He sees it too, as she enters the station. He sees the faint link between them, extending. To grow and settle, all across Italy. 

He wonders, if he pays attention, how much further it can go. 

Those little debts. Those bits of acknowledgement. 

One small act, here and there, that doesn't cost him anything.

Where he doesn't sacrifice anything he wants to keep. 

One small debt, to another cousin, or a friend of a friend. 

Listen. Play nice. See how far it will open up the path.

Primo looks at the sky.

How deep can it go? 

How much can he claim to his name?

He sees Regina and Anna Maria, standing tall and proud, after escaping their pasts. Coming out alive. Ready to fight back, in silence, as the world goes around.

He sees Leonardo, hunched but steady, as the world rains hardship on him. He watches. He listens. And he keeps on going.

With time, and care, anything is possible, it seems. 

All those little debts, all those little secrets.

All those silences.

Primo had never seen it like this. 

Time. 

Care.

Debts.

Knowledge.

He can do anything then. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for coming through to the end. I hope you liked reading this, and again, I'm sorry (for putting Primo through this mainly...). 
> 
> Can you believe this came up because I was wondering about how Primo seems to be extra in terms of controlling what he looks like/says/does around others? How he needs the control over himself to exist in the social circles he evolves in? *sigh* I'm sorry. 
> 
> Come and [say hi on Tumblr](https://smaugthemagnificient.tumblr.com/)! (or curse me, at this stage, I wouldn't hold it against you)


End file.
